


a grave to dig

by r_astra



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: (briefly) - Freeform, (original trilogy canon compliant), (sort of), Alternate Universe, Anakin Skywalker Has Issues, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Canonical Child Death, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grandparent Dooku (Star Wars), Hurt Anakin Skywalker, Hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi, Hurt Padmé Amidala, Jedi Padmé Amidala, Mentioned Qui-Gon Jinn, Mind Manipulation, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Padmé Amidala Lives, Past Child Abuse, Protective Dooku (Star Wars), and was so betrayed, baby me loved these movies so much, never rewatch childhood favorites friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26628619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_astra/pseuds/r_astra
Summary: “He left a holo,” Obi Wan says softly, staring at his hands. They’re in Qui-Gon’s quarters in the Temple. Their robes still smell like funeral smoke. “He said he wanted me to teach you, if—if anything happened.”Anakin stares at this stranger before him, who speaks of Qui-Gon like a son speaks of a father.“He never mentioned you,” Anakin says, and walks out.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 421





	a grave to dig

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Esmerelda, by Ben Howard:
> 
> Lonely, oh, no not me  
> I have a grave to dig, fast moving feet  
> You gave me light  
> Where it once was gone  
> I made a bed  
> Where you don't belong

Anakin meets Padmé Naberrie when he’s ten years old. He’s fresh off Tatooine, his face still desert-brown, hair still sand-dune-pale. He doesn’t fit in in the crèche, and neither does she, really. They’re both too different from the others. 

Anakin sticks out like a sore thumb, with nine years less of learning than his agemates and nine years more of manual labor. When he fights, he’s too brutal. When he speaks, he’s too abrasive. When he writes, his letters come out wobbly and unsure. 

Padmé sticks out less like a sore thumb and more like an oasis. She laughs. She sings. She flaunts freedom like Hutts flaunt their pretty Twilek girls. It’s because she has a family, Anakin thinks. Her sisters write her letters in secret and she sends her parents holos of herself so they can watch as she grows. 

“When I turn thirteen,” Padmé confides. “I’ll leave the Temple and go back to Naboo.” 

“How?” Anakin asks. He doesn’t understand. He’s never heard of anyone escaping a master before. Not alive. 

Padmé frowns a little, like she’s not sure what he’s asking. She changes the subject. 

She turns thirteen two weeks later and disappears. She sends Anakin a holo from Naboo. There’s so much water in the background, so much green, Anakin almost thinks it’s fake. But it’s Padmé, and she’s never lied to him before. 

  
  


Anakin’s sure he never would’ve been chosen if it weren’t for the way his practice saber sings in his hands, the way he takes down opponents years older than him with ease. The Jedi that picks him is called Qui-Gon Jinn. 

(Years later, Anakin will return to his and Obi Wan’s quarters one night when he was supposed to be in an overnight training sim. He’ll find Obi Wan sprawled across the couch, an empty bottle of something that smells like disinfectant held loosely in his hands. As Anakin helps him to his bed, Obi Wan will mumble nearly incoherently about Qui Gon and padawans and say: “Soon as I saw you duel, I knew he was going to leave me.” 

Years later, Anakin will lay awake all night, thinking about the day Qui-Gon came to watch him take down Bardel Murken and try and remember his apprentice, watching silently from his side.) 

But Anakin’s thirteen and desperate to believe someone wants to teach him, this too-brutal desert child with too many memories of Tatooine and too few years in the crèche. He doesn’t notice Obi Wan on the day of the duel, or on any of the days after, until a mission goes south on Jakku not even a year into his apprenticeship, and Anakin returns to Coruscant with Qui-Gon’s dead body. 

  
  


“He left a holo,” Obi Wan says softly, staring at his hands. They’re in Qui-Gon’s quarters in the Temple. Their robes still smell like funeral smoke. “He said he wanted me to teach you, if—if anything happened.” 

Anakin stares at this stranger before him, who speaks of Qui-Gon like a son speaks of a father. 

“He never mentioned you,” Anakin says, and walks out. 

He stows away on a freighter bound for Naboo the next day. 

  
  


When he lands on the too-green planet, it turns out Padmé became a queen when Anakin wasn’t looking. An honest-to-god, dresses-in-elaborate-gowns-and-sits-on-a-throne queen. 

“It’s not like that,” she laughs. “We’re not a monarchy. It’s an elected position.” 

How Padmé got elected to anything at sixteen, Anakin has no clue. He doesn’t bother to ask. 

She carves some time out of her schedule for him the morning after he arrives. She tries to teach him how to skip rocks without the Force. It’s harder than it looks. 

“I know him,” Padmé says when Anakin brings up Obi Wan. “He was Qui-Gon’s apprentice before you. He used to teach Form 6 in the crèche.” 

Anakin throws another rock. It doesn’t skip. 

Padmé just hums in response, noncommittal. 

“What’s he like?” Anakin asks after a moment. 

“He’s kind.” 

“As kind as you?” 

She snorts a laugh. “Kinder.” 

They wind up tangled together in the green grass most of the morning, Padmé’s knife-sharp smile pressed against Anakin’s chapped lips. 

  
  


Anakin answers a knock on his door a few days later and just stands there for a moment, staring in surprise. Then he shrugs fatalistically and steps aside to let Obi Wan in. 

They sit in silence for a moment, then Obi Wan says: “I talked to Master Yoda, and he’s agreed to teach you, if—” 

Anakin crosses his arms. “You’re backing out?” 

Obi Wan blinks at him for a moment. “No,” he says finally. “I just thought you’d rather—” 

“I don’t want Yoda,” Anakin says, maybe a little defensive. “He’s a crazy old coot.” 

Obi Wan chokes down a startled laugh. “He’s a good master,” he insists. “He finished my training.” 

“Nah,” Anakin says. “I’ll take you.” 

“Alright,” Obi Wan says softly, staring at his hands. “Alright.” 

  
  


Obi Wan is the best duelist Anakin’s ever seen. He doesn’t talk about Qui-Gon. Anakin doesn’t talk about Padmé. 

He sends her letters and holos over a secure channel. She sends some back. They work on a plan to meet up again in person. 

Obi Wan quizzes Anakin on the politics of the entire galaxy, drills his weakest saber forms, guides him through hours and hours of meditation. 

They make a good team. Their mission success rate is the best in the Order. 

  
  


Anakin can’t believe his luck when they’re sent to Naboo to oversee negotiations with the Trade Federation. 

The mission’s FUBAR from start to finish, but Padmé and Obi Wan are both fighting alongside him, and nothing’s ever felt so right. 

It’s wrong, probably, to be so happy when the whole galaxy is careening straight into war, but he can’t manage to care very much. 

The Chancellor is kicked out of office over the whole debacle. The new one gets a clone army, drafts the Jedi, and declares war. 

  
  


Padmé becomes a senator and moves back to Coruscant when she’s twenty-four and Anakin’s twenty-two. She’s important enough that people don’t ask how she’s acquainted with a Jedi. He’s old enough that Obi Wan doesn’t ask where he goes when he disappears for hours on end. 

It works out well. 

  
  


“I’m ready for the trials,” Anakin insists on a nearly daily basis. 

“Not yet,” Obi Wan denies over and over and over. 

“He’s holding me back,” Anakin rants to Padmé, pacing the length of her apartment. 

Padmé huffs, and pulls him towards the bed. “Why don’t you put all that energy to good use?” 

  
  


(Obi Wan thinks of the months after Qui Gon left him at the Temple alone, of the gaping hole in his mind where his padawan bond was ripped away before he was ready, of the way it felt like he was drowning in the emptiness. Thinks of the grief and the darkness and thinks _not yet, not yet._ ) 

  
  


The Chancellor is Padmé’s great-uncle. Anakin learns this when the old man walks into Padmé’s apartment to see Anakin eating breakfast at the kitchen table in nothing but his underwear. 

Palpatine laughs it off. “Young love,” he teases. Then, more sincerely: “Don’t worry yourself, my boy. I won’t tell a soul.” 

Anakin’s heart pounds in his throat all week, waiting to be called into the council chambers or barred from the Temple altogether. 

Nothing happens. Palpatine keeps his word. 

  
  


War is brutal and unforgiving. It wears them all down, makes them do things they never would’ve, before. 

“We used to be peacekeepers,” Obi Wan says one night, once he’s got half a bottle of liquor in him. 

“There’s no peace left to keep,” Anakin says and Obi Wan laughs, long and low and bitter. 

  
  


Anakin is Knighted at twenty-three. The trials are condensed to the two-day stretch he’s scheduled to be on Coruscant. They give him his own division and send him straight back to the front. 

  
  


“You could leave,” Padmé says, her breath hot against the skin of his neck. 

Anakin just shakes his head. 

“I did,” she reminds him. 

Padmé’s different, though. She always belonged to… Her family, he guesses, or maybe to herself. Anakin’s never belonged to himself. He belonged to Gardulla, and then Watto, before a Jedi walked into Mos Espa to haggle for a desert-browned boy with sand-pale hair. 

He’s never met anyone who left their master and lived. 

Padmé cards her hand through his hair. It’s curlier than it was in Tatooine’s bone-dry wind. It isn’t sand-pale, anymore, either. 

  
  


“What is the difference between a Jedi and a Sith, my boy? I’ve never truly understood.” 

“Sith use the Dark Side of the Force. Jedi use the Light.” 

“I’m not a Jedi, Ani.” Sheev smiles, amused. “I don’t know what that means.” 

Anakin pauses, considers how to explain without Jedi philosophies. “Sith are selfish,” he says finally. “They use the Force to pursue their own goals and desires instead of peace.” 

“Are Jedi not free to pursue their own goals and desires?” 

Anakin frowns. “You know we’re not.” 

Sheev hums, and it sounds like a conclusion. 

“What is it?” 

“Nothing,” the old man assures him. “It’s just—Well, the Republic guarantees the personal freedom of its citizens. Jedi are technically in violation of that, aren’t they?” 

“We have free will,” Anakin argues. 

Sheev frowns at Anakin, but his eyes are kind. “Do you?” 

  
  


“What’s the opposite of free will?” 

“What?” Padmé asks, looking up from her datapad. 

“The opposite of free will. What is it?” 

“Subjugation?” Padmé frowns. “Why?” 

“Nothing,” Anakin says. “It doesn’t matter.” 

  
  


Count Dooku was Qui-Gon’s Master. He calls Obi Wan ‘grandson.’ He treats Anakin with nothing but disdain. 

“What’s with this asshole?” Anakin gripes after a particularly annoying encounter. 

Obi Wan exhales, eyes closed. He looks exhausted. “I don’t know. I only met him once before he left the Order.” 

“And?” 

“And nothing. He was happy Qui-Gon finally took an apprentice. Then they had some big argument and we left.” 

“He didn’t have any padawans before you?” 

“No,” Obi Wan says. “He didn’t want any. The Council practically forced him to take me.” 

“Why?” 

“Yoda didn’t want me to age out.” 

Anakin frowns, taken aback. “No way you were going to age out. You’re better with a saber than any of your agemates.” 

Obi Wan shrugs. He looks uncomfortable. “Plenty of great Jedi are terrible duelists, Anakin.” 

Anakin lets it go. 

  
  


“I fear the Jedi are growing to love war,” Sheev confides. 

Anakin doesn’t answer. 

“They’ve changed their recruitment methods.” 

“What do you mean?” 

The old man hesitates. “There have been reports of stolen children. Infants.” 

“The Order requires parental consent,” Anakin insists. 

Sheev looks at him sadly. “Did your mother give consent? Did you?” 

Anakin looks away. “That was different.” 

“You have to think for yourself, Ani. Don’t listen to what they tell you. Watch what they do.” 

  
  


The Jedi send clones to the front to die in droves, put padawans in charge of battalions, hunt down children with less than an ounce of Force sensitivity and train them for war, not peace. 

The Jedi walked into Mos Eisley and bought Anakin for the price of a nice speeder. 

Whenever Anakin brings up Sheev, Padmé’s lips thin. “He’s up to something, Ani.” 

“He’s catching on to the Order’s shit.” 

Padmé hums, and it sounds like denial. 

  
  


All wars are brutal and unforgiving, but this one stinks of lies and rot. The smell of it ignites a fury in Anakin that no amount of meditating in the world can douse. 

“This war is wrong,” Anakin says one night, once he’s got some liquor in him. 

“It’ll be fought with or without us,” Obi Wan says and Anakin throws his bottle against the wall. 

Obi Wan doesn’t react to the glass that showers the room, just tops off his tumbler and hands the bottle to Anakin wordlessly. 

Anakin’s been keeping a tally of how many clones he’s lost since the start of the war. 

The count is in the thousands. 

  
  


The next time he’s on Coruscant, Padmé whispers monumental news in his ear as they lie in bed. 

He says nothing for a moment, just breathes deep and reminds himself: children follow the mother. His child will be free. 

“Ani?” 

He opens his eyes to see Padmé’s face, more unsure than he’s ever seen it. “Padmé,” he says slowly. “That’s amazing. That’s—” 

Anakin runs out of words. 

He’s having a child, and his child will be free. 

  
  


At night, he dreams he wears an iron collar, like some of the more rebellious slaves wore on Tatooine. 

When he wakes, he can still feel it yanking at his neck, dragging him backwards towards the Temple as he scrabbles for purchase in the sand. 

“Is Force sensitivity genetic?” he asks Obi Wan. 

The older man frowns. “I have no clue. Why?” 

Anakin waves him off. “Random thought I had.” 

Obi Wan squints at him for a moment, but lets it go. 

The Council said Anakin shone so brightly in the Force that they saw him on Tatooine from the Jedi Temple, halfway across the galaxy. 

How bright will his child shine? 

  
  


The Council is moving against Sheev. 

“They can’t do this to you!” Anakin paces in front of the window in Sheev’s office. 

“The Jedi are not governed,” the Chancellor says calmly. “They can do whatever they want, to whoever they want.” 

“That’s not right!” 

“Even if I’m their enemy?” 

Anakin stops pacing. “You’d never betray the Republic.” 

“Are the Jedi the Republic?” 

Anakin frowns, shakes his head. “No.” 

Sheev lets the silence hang for a minute, then asks: “What is the difference between a Jedi and a Sith, Ani?” Sheev asks gently. 

Anakin just shakes his head. 

“You told me the difference was that Jedi pursue peace. Are the Jedi pursuing peace now?” 

  
  


“Don’t you ever wish you knew your family?” Anakin asks Obi Wan one day. 

Obi Wan thinks over his answer for a moment. “Not all families are good, Anakin. I had a safe childhood. I was protected, educated, trained. It would be illogical to gamble on my birth family providing better care.” 

“But don’t you wish you knew?” 

Obi Wan sighs. “Sure.” He fiddles with the hilt of his lightsaber. “Sometimes.” 

Anakin is struck suddenly by how tired he looks. “They stole you,” he says. “And they bought me.” 

Obi Wan looks at him sharply. “They freed you, Anakin.” 

“Did they?” Anakin says, and then the alarms sound and they’re rushing to battle stations. 

  
  


They never finish the conversation. Obi Wan is sent after General Grievous. Anakin is called back to Coruscant. Padmé isn’t there. She left him a message saying she wouldn’t be, so he’s not worried. 

Sheev is worried. 

“My boy,” he says. “I think you need to leave this planet.” 

“What? Why—” 

“I’m worried—” Sheev purses his lips, shakes his head once. 

“You’re worried about what?” 

The Chancellor looks at him and there something in his eyes that makes Anakin think that he’s _afraid_. “I think the Jedi are making their move,” he says, then pauses, takes a breath. “Padmé spoke to me a few days ago about some concerns she’s had. About the Jedi.” 

Anakin frowned. “Okay?” 

Sheev looks at him with his kind, afraid eyes and says: “She disappeared the day after, but not before warning me to leave as well. I don’t know where she is.” 

Anakin’s lungs stutter to a halt. 

“Breathe, my boy,” Sheev says, hand firm on Anakin’s shoulder. “Do you see why I want you to leave?” 

Anakin shakes his head desperately. “I can’t leave you,” he says. “They’ll—” 

“Kill me?” Sheev says. “I imagine they will. But I won’t abandon the Republic.” 

Anakin steels himself, dragging his lungs under control. “And I won’t abandon you,” he says. “Padmé knows what she’s doing. She always does. And she can protect herself.” 

“You are a good man, Anakin Skywalker,” Sheev says fondly, if a little sad. “A good man, and a good friend.” 

  
  


When Mace raises his purple saber over Sheev’s cowering form, Anakin cuts off his hand before he can even react. 

  
  


“What have you done?” Padmé says on Mustafar and it’s less a question and more an accusation, a judgement. 

“What I had to,” he says. 

“Obi Wan says you joined the Sith.” 

“I saved Sheev!” he snaps. “The Jedi were going to kill him!” 

“He’s behind all of this, Ani, don’t you see? He’s evil.” 

“He’s my friend.” 

“He’s never been your friend,” Padmé spits. “He likes power and you have it, that’s all! He’s a Sith!” 

“How bad can the Sith be, if they’re the enemy of the Jedi?” 

“You don’t mean that,” Padmé says. Her lips are nearly white, they’re pressed together so tightly. “The _younglings_ are dead, Ani. You can’t mean that.” 

Anakin flinches, sees the small bodies at his feet. “I do,” he insists, shoving back nausea. “The Jedi are a cancer. They have to be burned out.” It has to be true. It has to. “They would have stolen the baby, Padmé! They would’ve taken the baby, and enslaved them, and now they won’t. Now they’ll never touch our child. Don’t you see? Sheev and I will protect us.” 

Padmé sucks in a disbelieving breath, eyes wide. “You’re his apprentice, then?” 

Anakin doesn’t answer, which is answer enough. 

“If you didn’t agree with the Jedi, you could’ve just left!” she yells. “We could’ve protected the baby ourselves! We could’ve gone back to Naboo and left all of it behind!” 

But Anakin never could’ve left. 

Padmé must see something of it in his eyes. Her mouth twists. “If you wanted a new master so bad,” she says viciously. “Maybe you should’ve gone back to Tatooine.” 

He doesn’t realize Padmé had a lightsaber until she catches his blade with it. 

By the time he realizes it’s just her old practice blade, she’s sprawled on the stone at his feet, burned and bleeding. Obi Wan is standing over her, blocking Anakin’s lightsaber with his own. 

“Anakin,” Obi Wan says. “Stop this.” He sounds like his heart is breaking. 

But Anakin can’t turn back now. There’s blood on his hands. Jedi blood and _children’s_ blood, traded for the life of his child. It had to be done. It _had to._

But he can save Obi Wan, if he can convince him. 

“You know the Jedi are wrong,” he says. “You _know._ ” 

“The Jedi didn’t paint the crèche red,” Obi Wan says. “A Sith did.” 

Anakin’s blood runs cold at the disgust in Obi Wan’s eyes. “Then you’re my enemy,” he says, voice low and as steady as he can make it with the way the Force is screaming at him, howling inside his head. 

They fight. Obi Wan wins. Anakin survives. 

  
  


(Obi Wan thinks it’s a swearing of allegiance, but he’s wrong. Anakin thinks it’s a passing of judgement. He’s wrong, too, but neither of them will realize it for decades. 

As old, dead men, Obi Wan will say: _I forgive you, it’s alright_ , and Anakin will shake his head desperately, grief screaming into the Force even after all these years, and he’ll say: _Obi Wan, the younglings._ _I killed the younglings._ And Obi Wan will look at him with wide eyes, grab him by the shoulders and say: _No. No, Anakin, you never stepped foot in the Temple. I saw the holos. Palpatine killed the younglings. Palpatine._

Both their hearts will break all over again, for themselves, and for the younglings, and for what might have been.) 

  
  


Padmé goes back to Naboo. The holos say she lost the baby. When Vader goes to check, she’s in a hospital bed. She screams in his face anyway, even though she’s weak and pale, with tears spilling down her cheeks. 

“He’s _dead._ ” She throws it at him like the accusation it is. 

He leaves. 

Within a week, she’s gone, disappeared from the planet and into the black. He never sees her again. 

Obi Wan is on Tatooine. He knows it. Everyone knows it, but no one can find him. 

Vader could find him, if he got close enough. He can still feel his presence in the back of his mind, the old training bond stretching out towards the Outer Rim like a taunt, like a threat. 

_Come and get me._

He never goes to Tatooine. 

  
  


(“I know, I know, Padmé.” Obi Wan's broken heart is breaking again, fragmenting into jagged shards that slice into his chest every time he takes a breath. “I know, and I am so sorry,” he pleads to his brother’s exhausted, tear-stained wife. She's clutching the twins protectively against her chest. “But he’ll see them. You know he will, look how bright they shine. He’ll see them, and he’ll come for them, and— If one of them is in the Outer Rim, and one near the Core, the Force will shine a little brighter in both directions and maybe he won’t notice. It’s—” The words catch in Obi Wan’s throat. 

“It’s their only hope,” Padmé finishes for him. Anakin is more powerful than anyone she’s ever known. Even as a child, he was like a hurricane, a force of nature. If he knows, if he realizes, nothing will stop him. Nothing can. 

She kisses each of the newborns in turn, then hands Luke to Obi Wan, fresh tears streaming down her face. When she turns to Bail and holds out her baby girl, both Senators are weeping. “You always did want a daughter,” she manages, because Bail had. 

So had Ani.) 


End file.
